How Can Congress Control Drone Warfare?

The US has unleashed fleets of drones around the world, embroiling the US militarily in countries against which no war has been declared. Under the US constitution, Congress is supposed to have the power to declare war and it is Congress which needs to provide oversight of military action.

So it is Congress that needs to turn off the administration’s currently un-debated green light for drone warfare.

We need to hear the House debate the cost of civilian casualties from drone strikes.

We need the Senate to debate whether assassinating people in a country with which we are not at war is breaking international law.

We need public discussion about the drones’ terrorization of families and communities around the globe.

And if we really care about national security, the counter-productive blow-back effect of drone warfare must be widely debated.

Here are two steps Congress can take to bring US drone warfare under public scrutiny, where it belongs:

Second, Congress needs to demand that any drone activity be under control of the Pentagon, not the CIA – because the CIA is unfortunately very good at concealing its actions from Congressional scrutiny. In early February, David Firestone of the New York Times reported how Senator Levin tried to hold a closed-door hearing on the drone program before the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees, and the White House would not let the CIA testify even to this restricted crowd.

The degree to which the CIA works to thwart Congressional oversight was underscored by the revelation last month that the spy agency had removed documents from the computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee during its investigation of CIA post-9/11 practices. If the CIA can’t be held accountable by the US Senate, then it should not be flying drones anywhere!

Finally, I’ll mention two more small steps Congress could take to help assert its control over the US’s drone war-making:

Ask the Justice Department to make public all its drone memos, so that they and we the public could judge the legality of their arguments in support of drone use.

Call for public hearings in both the Senate and the House of Representatives on the drones program.

Our legislators – and we – need to hear the effects of US drone use around the world!

Maud Easter

2 Responses

I don’t doubt the sincerity of your intentions, but have serious concerns about your recognition of the harsh, and unpleasant, reality that a dedicated, and proven capable, enemy has declared war on the people of the United States.

This war, like all wars, is NOT a game, NOT a matter of creating a “level playing field” or involving fairness or tactical equality . It’s strictly a matter of destroying an enemy, before that enemy destroys us. This “Jihadist Movement”, or whatever name it chooses, has initiated this action and has shown absolutely no interest in aborting it’s maniacal objectives and has proven itself resolute and deadly capable.

The ONLY rational objective should be this entity’s complete extermination, with as little risk of American collateral damage as possible. Unlike this enemy, innocent civilians are not selected as easy, safe targets incapable of defending themselves to provide maximum fear and terror, by American efforts. On the contrary, significant effort is made to avoid civilian casualties, despite the insistance of some civilians (supporters and co-conspirators) to provide protection to emeny forces as “human shield”.

The true responsibility for these “civilian” casualties are the “civilians” who choose to imbed themselves withing the midst of terrorists and those unfortunate individuals who are forced to mingle within terrorist groups.

It’s my firm belief that enough of our elected representatives in Congress fully understand this threat, and it’s risk, and fully support the effort to ELIMINATE the threat these fanatics pose to the American people. There should be no need to “educate” our leaders, who need only to look to our greatest City and Government Buildings in our Capitol to understand EXACTLY what is at stake.

Congress is, or at least should well be, aware of the permission it has granted to the American forces it has empowered to deal with this threat in the most efficient and effective manner possible to end the threat in the shortest possible time fram with the absolute minimum in American casualties. Like ALL wartime military tactics, using drones is designed and intended to assist as much as possible in the defeat of, in this instance, a maniacle enemy, and has thusfar proven reliable and EFFECTIVE.

As a Republic, our elected representatives have the responsibility to monitor and control actions taken on our behalf, and there is no reason to doubt our assigned representatives in Congress are not faithfully discharging those responsibilities carefully and effectively. Likewise it is reasonable to conclude the American people FULLY UNDERSTAND that the use of drones to carry the conflict directly to those who instigated it and actively pose a significant threat against the American people is not only appropriate, but a prudent step towards reducing the overall threat the leadership of these fanatics can pose to American interests.

The United States government, nor our people, seek dominance or control over these radical extremists, but thete should be no doubt that we will NEVER accept or allow them, or anyone else, to exercise any level of dominance or control over us, up to the TOTAL ELIMINATION of the source of such threat by whatever means at our disposal.

As more and more information is revealed and we find out more about the civilian killings by weaponized drone attacks in Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan (and those are the only ones being reported at all) it’s clear that neither Congress nor the people of the US have enough information to make informed decisions on these extrajudicial killings.

This secrecy and outright lies about drone casualties on the part of CIA officials means that only the executive branch has control over policies that affect us all.

In addition to Maud’s suggestion that we support the repeal, the sunset or the defunding of the Authorization of Military Force law that is being so abused at this time there are now some bills to require that more information be released about the actual human deaths and injuries brought about by US drone attacks.

One such bipartisan bill has been introduced by Representatives Adam Schiff and Walter Jones. It requires annual reporting on drone casualties.